


York

by J_D_McCormick



Category: Constantine (TV), Hellblazer & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, John Constantine Needs A Hug, Newcastle aftermath, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, and also therapy, chas chandler is a good friend, newcastle, the above are very graphic and form like the whole premise of the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:54:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29666889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_D_McCormick/pseuds/J_D_McCormick
Summary: John isn’t a stranger to this thing, this place. He may be in a different house, may be a few years older, a few cities over, but it’s familiar regardless.~After Newcastle, John and Chas end up living in York. John plans on dying in York, too.
Relationships: Chas Chandler & John Constantine
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	York

**Author's Note:**

> *Please mind the tags. Detailed warnings in the end notes.*
> 
> Since I got into DC comics beyond Batman, I've loved Constantine. He's a smarmy, cocky git of a man who hides how much he cares behind sarcasm and wit, and I'm a sucker for it. He's also a man struggling deeply and constantly with mental health issues and I can relate. And sometimes, you just have to project all over your favourite characters, and who better to do it with than a character where it's part of their canon?
> 
> This fic is entirely about exploring John's suicidal feelings, how he was affected in the aftermath of Newcastle, and how he ended up in Ravenscar. The versions of characters here are a bit of a blend between CW's Constantine show, and the DCAMU movies (Justice League Dark, City of Demons, Apokolips War) as well as what comics knowledge I have. Also, pretty sure I stole John's childhood suicide attempt from the shitty 2005 movie, but I'm willing to bet that has comic origins somewhere.
> 
> So, uh... enjoy...?

Red. Blood.

So much blood.

 _I should bloody well hope so,_ a quiet part of his mind manages to think, incongruous to everything else in his head, _no point slitting your wrists if there’s no blood._

John isn’t a stranger to this thing, this place. He may be in a different house, may be a few years older, a few cities over, but it’s familiar regardless; slumped in a bathtub, head against cool tile, deep opaque red streaming and pooling over his skin. He’d been in the tub last time, same reason as now – no need to cause a mess. No need to make someone else’s life harder with the cleanup. He could curl up comfortable in his bed, but making someone dispose of his sheets and his mattress and his pillows and his duvet seems like far too much hassle. He’s seen what blood does to crime scenes, how it soaks into carpets, how it stains through floorboards. No need to make some bastard tear up the floor to get rid of the mess when he can contain it.

Here? Just a bodybag for the meat, and a rinse with the showerhead. Only that, to be done with him. He feels much better about that.

He watches idly as the blood soaks into his shirt. He thinks last time, it was faster. He doesn’t remember doing so much watching, so much waiting. Last time, he’d clambered into the tub, taken a few deep breaths to try and steady himself, and then used his pocket knife to tear clean cuts from elbow to wrist. He’d been less used to hurting himself then, had shaken terribly, had needed to grit his teeth and do it quick before he could become afraid of the pain. By all accounts, he should have done a better job this time.

_But last time, he wasn’t scared._

He hisses at that little voice in his head, that mocking piece of himself which is always taunting, deriding, sneering at every little thing he does. _Poor little Johnny, scared to die. Not so big and scary, now, are you?_ He shakes his head, hitting it against the tile to shut it up. He just wants peace. Just for a little while, just for a minute.

The first time, that’s all he wanted. Just a bit of peace, just a bit of rest. Just to be left _alone,_ for once in his bloody life. He just wanted away from all of it – from the shadows of people, empty and pale, screaming in torment, begging for mercy, drifting listlessly like broken puppets on automatic strings; from the taunting and the teasing and the jeering and the names, from the boys who muttered in the school halls and the family who had no such volume filter, from “crazy” and “faggot” and “schizo” and “killer”; from the fists and the broken noses and the taste of blood in his mouth and the swoop of his stomach before he hit the bottom of the stairs.

It had all been so much. All his life, it’s all been _so much_. It’s just never stopped, and John is tired. He’s been tired since he was 17. He’s been tired since he was born.

Not that killing himself was really going to do anything. He’d been taught that, before. A minute in Hell, but a minute was enough. Enough to scare the shit out of him, enough to send him running, enough to have him finding every way he fucking could of avoiding going back there ever again. And yet here he is, blood in the bathtub, liquid life down the drain.

He’s fucking terrified.

_He fucking deserves it._

Still, it’s peaceful here. The quiet bathroom, the cold tile. The pain has dimmed to a quiet throb, adrenaline and endorphins soothing down the rest of it, edging away the panicked racing of his thoughts. Maybe he could have done a quicker job, maybe he could have made it so he’d bleed out faster, but this isn’t so bad. He can drift here, serene for a while, try to pretend he’s not going to be burning in Hell soon, avoid thinking about inevitable damnation for just a few minutes. The fog of bloodloss is starting to settle over him. He can have a few minutes of peace.

Or at least, that’s what he thinks until he hears the front door handle rattle, and his heart starts hammering hard in his chest again.

Chas.

 _Fucking Chas_.

Chas has been by his side since- since- since Newcastle. They’re old friends, childhood friends, but since they formed the band they’ve been in each other’s space non-stop, just like everyone has. But since Newcastle, the band’s been drifting apart; Les had been killed in the massacre following Nergal’s summoning, and Beano fled not long after. Just a week ago, Gary had up and left, saying he was going home. But for the past month, they’ve been living together in this ratty old apartment, and Chas hasn’t left him. Chas has stayed. Chas-

Chas doesn’t deserve to deal with this. Out of all of them, John thinks Chas has the softest heart. He was meant to be out tonight, taking a break from John’s mess, trying to sort his head out or at least distract himself for a while. John’s left a note for him on the door – _I’m going to help Astra. Don’t go inside. Call the police and let them handle it. -John –_ and locked him out, in the hopes of saving him all this. He knows it’s going to be hard for him, but he’s been chatting up a bird, recently, and maybe with John finally out of the way he can settle down, have a good proper life.

Or that was the plan, at least. But of course, Chas had to come back early. God forbid a single thing in John’s life go right.

The rattling gets louder, until Chas finally manages to get the door open. John hears his footsteps, loud even through the bathroom door, as he hurries into the apartment.

“John? John, what the fuck have you done? Bloody hell, John, answer me!!”

John resolves to stay quiet. Maybe, if he acts like he’s dead already, Chas will leave well enough alone until he actually passes. He doesn’t really believe it. He can hear Chas already checking through the meagre rooms of their apartment. He stares at the blood that flows down his arms as he flexes his hands.

Eventually, Chas gets to the bathroom door, because there’s only so many others he can check. He finds it locked, of course – another benefit of bathrooms, locks on the doors to keep people out until you were good and done, good and dead (not that it’s helped him either time, come to think of it) – and immediately starts rattling it like a poltergeist with a grudge.

“John?! John are you in there? What bloody stupid thing have you done, John, let me in there-” Chas’ voice is loud, panicked, and John knows just what he’ll look like right now; frantic, dark hair falling out of its spikes because he runs his hands through it when he’s anxious, eyes wide and darting. He feels something in him crack as he listens to Chas banging on the door. His throat goes tight, and his eyes sting, and a sob bubbles up from his chest unbidden.

There’s a moment of quiet, and then he hears Chas breathe his name and start trying to get in with renewed vigor. John scrabbles to try and sit up, chest tight, not sure if he’s trying to hide what he’s done or grab for his knife, but his hands are slick with blood and they slip against the tub, sending him sprawling back again. Chas is throwing his whole weight against the door now, aiming to break it, and John’s mind is seized with panic – for a moment he doesn’t know for what, but then the door cracks and Chas starts to shoulder through and he realizes-

He’s afraid of Hell, but he’s more afraid of staying alive.

John tries to grab for his knife at the same moment Chas stumbles into the bathroom. His grip is clumsy and he fumbles it, giving Chas just enough time to reel in shock, take in the sight, then dive back into action. He gets the knife in his grip again just as Chas reaches forward to snatch it from him, and though he tries to keep a hold of it he doesn’t have the strength. Chas wrenches it from his hands and throws it against the opposite wall.

“Holy shit. Jesus fucking Christ, John, what the hell did you do-” Chas’ voice is strained, half an octave higher than usual in panic as he grips onto John’s shoulders and tries to pull him up.

John fights against his grip. “Let me go! Let me go, Chas, sod off, you’re not meant to be here-”

“I’m not going bloody anywhere! What were you thinking?!” Chas yells back, voice raised to match John’s.

“ _Go away!_ ” John’s throat is raw, from the tears and the shouting. His arms feel like fire, licking up and down his nerves, the blissful fog from earlier gone. “Let me die.”

“No.” Chas snarls. “Why the hell-”

“I’m going to help Astra.” John says, tugging at Chas’ shirt, meeting his eyes and begging him to understand. “I’m going to go to Hell, and I’m going to help Astra.”

“John.” Chas says, and his tone is mournful, grief-stricken.

“I’ll go to Hell and I’ll find her, and once I do I’ll get her out. I’ll set her free, Chas.”

“How will you do that, John? How will you get her out? How will _you_ get out?” Chas asks, sharp and hard.

He won’t. That’s the point. He’ll stay there, and she’ll go free, and he’ll pay for what he did to her. A minute in Hell was enough for him, and he’d been seventeen, ten years older and ten years stronger. She’s been there over a month. He deserves eternal damnation, for the mistake he’d made, for the deaths he caused, for the damnation of an innocent girl he’d promised to protect. John flounders for a second.

“I’ll figure it out.” He rasps, but Chas doesn’t buy it. Just scowls and hooks his hands under John’s armpits and hauls him out of the bathtub and onto the linoleum.

“The fuck you will, you _stupid_ bastard.” Chas hisses. He grabs the towels off the radiator, bundles them up and presses them to John’s wrists. John howls with the pain of it, still writhing to get free. “You are not going to die. Not right now, not under my watch. Do you understand me, John Constantine?”

“Just let me go.” John sobs, and what he means is _just let me die_.

But Chas doesn’t. Chas presses John’s arms to his stomach, still bundled against the towels, keeping pressure on them both while he fumbles for the first aid kit above the sink. He replaces the towels with wads of gauze, bandages them tightly to try and stem the bleeding – there’s still so much blood, on John’s arms and his clothes and the towels and Chas’ shirt – before tucking John to his chest. John kicks his legs weakly and cries, screams, loud and ugly, while Chas holds him and rocks them side to side.

“’M tired, Chas.” He manages to choke out. A final desperate plea. _I’m tired, let me rest._

“You need to go to the hospital, John.” Chas murmurs. “I think this is worse than my meagre first aid skills can handle.”

He’s talking more than the cuts, the blood starting to seep through the bandages as John watches. John has been here, too. Asylums don’t take kindly to people like John, who see things normal people can’t, who talk magic and demons, who want to die. As a kid he swears he’d been cycled through twenty different medications, before he was old enough to check himself out and take off onto the road with Chas and the band.

No-one had visited him in the last asylum. His mates didn’t know where he’d gone for the longest time, and when they found out, they hadn’t been able to get in. His old man certainly wasn’t going to visit him. And Cheryl…He’d seen her once, after waking up in the hospital. Never again. By the time he got out, she was gone.

It had been Cheryl who found him last time – he doesn’t remember that, was unconscious by the time she’d gotten into the bathroom and seen him lying there. She’d watched him die, in the back of the ambulance she called for him, watched him stay dead for a whole minute before they managed to restart his heart. It wasn’t long after that she left, and John has always thought that this was what had scared her off; seeing him bleeding, dying by his own hand. He can’t blame her. He runs when people he loves die too.

He doesn’t want to live long enough to see Chas do that too.

“No.” John says, chest heaving, trying to fight his way out of Chas’s grip again. “No, no, no. No, you can’t- I can’t Chas, just lemme go, jus’, jus’ let me be-”

“John, calm down.” Chas’ voice is ticking up toward alarm again, his grip on John tightening.

John doesn’t listen; can’t listen. He can’t bear to think of being stuck somewhere that people will force him to stay alive and exist with the guilt of his mistakes, where he has to shut up or end up tied down, where he’s surrounded by strangers and his every move is watched, monitored, recorded, analysed. He doesn’t want to be dumped somewhere and forced to watch as everyone leaves him. _He_ was meant to be the one leaving, this time. _He_ was meant to be the one in control. He screams.

The rest happens in a blur. Chas lets go of John with one arm to grab the phone; John scrabbles his arms free long enough to tear the bandages off his wrists and dig his nails in the wounds to make them bleed anew; Chas does a lot of yelling, fighting John to restrain him again, words like “nervous breakdown” and “paramedics, now” the only ones that catch in John’s brain; John does a lot of yelling in return, but he doesn’t really use any words at all. At some point paramedics get there. At some point someone pins John’s arm down roughly, and injects something cold into a vein.

His head goes light. Everything starts to feel a little distant. He thinks, _finally_.

“Thank you.” He breathes, in what he thinks is the direction of whoever finally listened, whoever finally helped him. His eyes blink heavily, and then Chas’ face is above him, deep brown eyes worried, brow furrowed in concern. A hand pets through his hair gently, and he almost wishes his body was coordinated enough to press into it.

“You’re gonna be alright, Johnny.” Chas murmurs. “I’ll see you soon, alright?”

 _Not too soon, you tosser, don’t hurry yourself along_ John thinks, but he doesn’t have time to make his mouth say it before he slips away into blissful, peaceful black. He won’t know until he wakes up that it isn’t the embrace of death, the quiet before the storm, the brief emptiness before damnation.

Still. It’s nice, for the time it lasts.

**Author's Note:**

> *FIC WARNINGS: graphic depiction of a suicide attempt involving cutting, description of injuries and blood, persistent suicidal thoughts, character being bodily restrained and sedated, mentions of hospitalisation, sectioning, and mental asylums*
> 
> It's a heavy one, but exploring suicidal thoughts/feelings/actions through characters is something that is... almost therapeutic for me? And can be for others, I'm certain. I'd really like to do more fics exploring John's past and his issues and his shitty, shitty coping mechanisms, but we'll see if I ever do. I have something like 500 words cut from my first draft of this, so maybe I'll rework that into something.
> 
> I don't know if you could necessarily... enjoy this fic, lmao, but feedback is as always appreciated! Thank you for reading, and well wishes to you all.


End file.
